India entered the gold medal match in the women’s compound team event at the Archery World Cup Stage II in Yecheon, South Korea on Wednesday.
The trio of Jyothi Surekha Vennam along with Aditi Gopichand Swami and Parneet Kaur, who were seeded second, beat the United States 233-229 in the semi-final. They will play Turkey, who beat top seeds South Korea, in the final on Saturday.
It was a relatively easy route to the gold medal match for the Indian team who got a bye in the first round due to their seeding. They then secured a solid 236-234 victory against Italy in the quarter-finals before beating the US.
However, the men’s team lost to lower-ranked Australia in the bronze medal match after having lost the semi-final to the US, both via shoot-outs. The team of Abhishek Verma, Prathamesh Fuge and Priyansh were seeded fourth and began their campaign with a 235-212 win over Vietnam and a shoot-out win over Denmark after ending the four rounds at 236-all. But the Indians fell short by three points in the shoot-out against the US and then, in the bronze medal match, the Australian won bronze by virtue of shooting two more Xs (arrows closer to the centre).
In the individual recurve qualification rounds, Deepika Kumari was the highest-ranked Indian amongst the women as she finished in fourth place with a score of 677 points. However, with the dismal performance of the other Indians like Bhajan Kaur (34th place) and Ankita Bhakat (64th place), the women’s team will be seeded sixth in the team event.
Among the men, Tarundeep Rai was the highest-ranked Indian in sixth place with a score of 681. The next best-placed Indian was Dhiraj Bommadevara who missed out on a top-10 finish by a lower X-count compared to the 9th and 10th places. Along with Mrinal Chauhan who finished in 21st place with a score of 673, the Indian men’s team are seeded in second place.
For the mixed team event, the pair of Rai and Kumari are seeded in second place with a combined score of 1358.